Riq Drum

The traditional family of Middle Eastern (Arabic) hand percussion instruments is generally defined as an open shell frame drum with large cymbals or jingles – aka Riq Drums. It is similar in appearance and origin to a tambourine, but this broad family of specialized drums is treated as a very serious and deeply nuanced instrument class in both traditional and modern Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Eastern European music.

For our Riq Drum multi-sample library, we captured a pair of full-sized drums, one larger 15-inch "daf" drum from Greece with metal rings and bearings (actually called a daf) and one smaller 13" riq drum from Egypt with wide tin "cymbals". We also captured a toy frame drum that we've modified into a miniature riq, by adding a series of rattles. We've also included a very large collection of ambient droning and "synth" percussion instruments, created entirely through heavily manipulating the source recordings for this library.

The riq has a goat-skin head, with large 3" tin rattles set in a thick wooden frame. It has a tight, pronounced tom-like sound, with a very metallic clatter and clack. The daf has a sheep's gut skin, instead of rawhide. Rather than large finger cymbal-like jingles like the smaller riq, our daf uses metal rings and balls to create a thinner, smoother buzzing rattle. The baby riq is a little 4" plastic framedrum instrument that we've modified with small rattles.

• Available by Direct Download or DVD.
• 2,310 Samples (standard PCM wav).
• 36 .nki files (unlocked format).
• 1.38 GB installed (806 MB Download).

Native Instruments Kontakt version 3.5 or 4 full retail version of Kontakt required to use all .nki instrument program presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" does not support this library.